Sermon by Walter G. Edmonds
Damascus United Methodist Church
Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; Matthew 28:1-10
Easter Sunday – March 23, 2008
HE IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED!
Within the walls of the Church, the shouts of these phrases break the silence of our souls. They cut to the quick of this radical day. We are here again to experience the sharp disconnect of Christ’s Gospel: Darkness to light, defeat to victory, sleep to wakefulness, death to life. These words are meant to pull us out of any bed of apathy, deliver us out of the constant malaise of the ordinary, and jar us into an age where we know that these days here on planet earth are not the end. “HE IS RISEN!” And our sister and brothers in Christ can’t wait to get it out of their mouths, ‘HE IS RISEN INDEED.”
Outside of the Church in the United States of America, these words are rarely spoken, or if they are, they are in the same category as “Happy Easter” or “Merry Christmas,” pleasantries. Why is this so? I venture to say, that the great thrust of this day which should occur in worship, and does occur in worship, is soon mollified by our well learned habits of “returning to business as usual.” We can go home and launch into the expected ham dinner, put sports on the television, indulge in those once a year chocolates and be lulled once again into the sleepy lethargy that leaves the Jesus of the Resurrection as the worship outing for the week. What a travesty to the saving Gospel of this day!
This day is the reoccurring moment of Jesus Christ to put us back in heaven where we can live with Him. This day is God’s deliberate connection to our very souls to say that they are not bound to our purely earthly habitats. This is the day God says, I raised my Son from death, and I’ll raise you from death if you’re willing to give yourself over to me, and stop returning to yourself absorption. This is the most powerful day of the year, if we allow it to be so, and crank up our spiritual antennae far enough into God’s wavelengths that we will not be disconnected.
Annie Dillard addresses the power of this day in this wonderfully visionary quote. “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, making a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ hats and straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to the pews (for safety). For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” Dillard vividly points us to the radical center of the Gospel of this day, and we need to explore the invitation to the real word God is directing us to.
The real word of this day is that we have been permanently changed. We are no longer bound to dying, no matter when the cessation of breath. Do we know what that means? Can we begin to enter the glorious realm that has been given to us in Jesus’ victory over death, yea the deleterious death of the cross?
Some of you I am certain are aware of the recent book Ninety Minutes in Heaven, written by Don Piper, a Baptist pastor from Texas. In his autobiography, Piper describes his tragic accident on his way home from a Baptist Convention. Hit by a tractor trailer on a bridge, Piper was declared dead by several sets of EMT’s and after taking an EKG. He was left in the driver’s seat because he could not be extricated without the ‘jaws of life.’ A tarp put over his body, those present at the accident began cleaning up the debris. About 90 minutes later, a friend from the conference, Dick Onarecker came upon the accident, stopped, and felt led to pray for the person in the red car. He had no idea who it was, and the person was covered so he couldn’t see him. Those present argued with Dick telling him it was a horrible scene under the tarp, and the man was dead, and had been so for over an hour. However, the last two EMT’s in charge relented, and Dick went and crawled in through the back, and placed a hand on the dead person’s shoulder and began praying. He also felt led to sing, so he took turns praying and singing. Dick said he had never prayed so hard in his life. While singing the hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” the second time, the dead man suddenly started singing in an almost inaudible whisper with him! Dick pushed his head outside the tarp yelling, ‘He’s alive! This man is alive!’ The EMT’s would not listen. Their response, ‘We’re professionals. We know a dead person when we see one.’ Dick begged them again and was blown off. In desperation, Dick stood in the middle of the bridge and yelled, ‘I’m going to lie down on this bridge and you’ll have to run over me. He’s alive and I’m not leaving until you examine him.’ To humor Dick, they checked Piper’s pulse, and sure enough there was a feeble beating. The EMT’s flew into action, secured the needed ‘Jaws’ and put Piper into an ambulance. He was taken to Huntsville Hospital and eventually the trauma center in Houston, some 6 ½ hours later. (Story and details are from Heaven Is Real; Don Piper, pp. 15-17)
In great contrast, radical contrast to any of the gruesome details of the wreck, Don Piper remembers these 90 minutes as the most holy time of his life. He relates that he was suddenly in a new place, with some kind of perfect body that was whole with no scars and no pain. He was instantly initiated into what we might call “the promise of the resurrection.” He recounts that all the things he had read about in I Corinthians 15 and the book of Revelation, but never taken seriously, were now visible and vibrant to him. “The music I had read about was now in my head. The perfection of the souls and bodies of those I had loved but seen no more, was suddenly with me, they never looking so complete and fulfilled as in this pure place.” Piper said, “I saw, felt, and experienced heaven, and I have no further arguments to make. That’s also the reason I didn’t talk about my experience for at least two years, thinking that people wouldn’t believe, or be so skeptical to say it was my imagination. It was too sacred a thing to argue about. It was too holy to throw out for cheap shots and twisted commentaries. It was Piper’s friend David Gentiles and others who convinced Piper that his story would be most encouraging for people to change their consciousness, to awake to the truth that because of this Easter day, heaven is our home, and we are meant to do all we can to make this earth the land of the resurrected Jesus.
In another book of our times, written by Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, we are given the insight and invitation to change our state of consciousness, in simple words, “awaken to what life’s really all about.” Tolle describes the transformation clearly, “Once you have a glimpse of awareness or Presence, you know it firsthand. It is no longer just a concept in your mind. You can make a conscious choice to be present rather than to indulge in useless thinking (or behavior). You can invite Presence into your life, that is to say, make space. With grace of awakening comes responsibility. You can either try to go on as if nothing has happened, or you can see its significance and recognize the arising of awareness as the most important thing that can happen to you. Opening yourself to the emerging consciousness and bringing its light into this world then becomes the primary purpose of your life.” Albert Einstein said, ‘I want to know the mind of God. The rest is details.’ What is the mind of God? Consciousness (of God’s Presence). What does it mean to know the mind of God? To be (brutally) aware. What are the details? Your outer purpose and whatever happens outwardly.” (Your Outer Purpose; Eckhart Tolle; p.261)
Today the purpose is as clear as it gets. Jesus is risen to tell us that earthly death is not the end of life. No matter how the world would try to deceive us, Jesus is absolutely clear about every human being’s life and essence. We are God’s children made for eternity, but given a round here on earth to work at it. We must boldly learn to live in his resurrection, and move into his sphere of living. His resurrection is a call in this moment and frankly every conscious moment to “cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:16,17 images) and all the ramifications of this ancient Biblical laundry list. Then we can live lives that show forth the manner and behavior of our Resurrected Lord. Then we truly meet the risen Christ in this hour of worship, and we are never the same. In fact, the more we meet the resurrected Christ Jesus in worship by our willingness to come to this place and any place with radical, (grass roots), commitment to Him, the more this world will be powerfully changed, and the more heaven we can expect and know on this earth.
The truth of the day still lies in our ancient greeting. If we experience his resurrection in worship, we will become dangerous people in the world, for we will never submit to the world’s disposition, and we will always risk the disconnect of the Resurrection Gospel. Thanks be to God!
HE IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED!
